


Valentine's Day

by Diaph



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Established Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, F/F, Fluff, Grand Gestures, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Lesbian Kara Danvers, Lesbian Lena Luthor, Love, Romance, SuperCorp, Valentine's Day, lesbian love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 02:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14126436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaph/pseuds/Diaph





	Valentine's Day

The fourteenth appeared quickly on the horizon. One moment it was Christmas, and then New Year’s blustered past with the blink of an eye, and now it’s the beginning of February and you are here, agonisingly stuck and completely stumped between two Valentine’s gifts in particular.

It was the under-the-breath jokes that did it. That got the best of your self-doubt. The small laughs at your expense over how outlandish your presents would be out of your absolute adoration for your very wonderfully and tentatively new girlfriend. 

You watched Kara grow uncomfortable and antsy everytime her sister and friends made a silly, ‘Oh, of course Lena will buy her three hundred boxes of chocolates and flowers from every florist in the city just to make sure she got the right ones,’ kind of joke. She would pick at her peach-painted fingernails, her face dropping down into an embarrassed blushing smile, and you would be left sat there smiling politely trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

But the jokes persisted and eventually you stopped laughing too. It was a quickly rushed glass of wine after work one night when Wynn dropped, ‘So what are you giving Kara for Valentine’s Day Mrs. Christian Grey? CatCo?’

Everybody laughed. Kara managed a tight smile uncomfortable smile and you suddenly realised why the jokes weren’t funny. They weren’t laughing at the idea that you were so smitten, so in love, that you would give Kara the entire world on a platter. They were laughing at the idea you would give Kara everything money could buy because you had no concept of money in the first place, no understanding of the value of it. They were laughing at the idea that you would hide behind grand and extravagant gestures because you’re a Luthor. And that’s what Luthors, and apparently _Christian Greys,_ do.

Winded by the thought, you drank up quickly and made your polite excuses to leave.

‘Don’t pay attention to them,’ Kara whispered into the back of your neck that night while you pretended to sleep. ‘I don’t want anything from you, I don’t need anything from you, being your girlfriend is just plenty,’ she hummed with warm breath.

You try and cling to those words every time you find yourself bitterly stood outside a Tiffany’s & Co. You never go inside, not yet at least. Instead you peer into the crystal glass at the Valentine’s display. The dazzling rings, the sapphire earrings, the little charm braces with diamonds dripping off the mannequin’s wrist, you’ve peered at every one of them and felt a similarly morose feeling wrap tighter around your lungs each time, and each time you are still just as utterly and completely dumbfounded with the idea that you would splurge on all of these pretty meaningless things for Kara while children’s hospitals lacked the equipment they needed, while Planned Parenthoods sat around unfunded, while tomorrow’s future doctors and teachers and scientists spend today worrying about how they will juggle their education with two full-time jobs and an ever growing list of debts to pay, while the world reaches up with dirty fingers and unheard cries for a better and more sustainable world.

Then again the thought persists that maybe Kara is worth grande gestures, maybe she is worth a thousand pretty meaningless things and then some. The truth of the matter is that a deep thought niggles inside your brain every time you’re stood outside that glittering jeweller’s display that there isn’t enough Cartier or Tiffany’s in the world for you to wrap around her thin wrists, if it would make her happy.

The thought of a happy Kara sticks inside your head and by the twelfth, you’ve finally settled on it. Or rather, you’ve finally gave in.

The calls are made.

The meeting taken place.

The cheques signed.

The handshakes given.

The deal done.

The thirteenth is spent guilty moping around the office, avoiding your girlfriend desperately. If Kara sees you she will know the truth. She’ll see in your rueful expression, in the faint and constant longing of your stare, in the permanent state of nervousness to be found in your antsy hands. She’ll know how incapable you are when it comes to small gestures, but it’s too late now to return the gift and so your course is set.

You stay extra long at the office and busy yourself with absolutely nothing until the deepest darkest hours of the night come and you are certain she is asleep.

“Good morning babe, do you know what today is?” she finally whispers against the warmth of your neck.

Of course you know what day it is.

“The fourteenth?” You blink one bleary eye open and rub your forehead, trying to seem at least a little uncertain of the facts. The yawn comes, then the stretch of your tight shoulders. You flop on your belly and sling an arm over her hip, “Just please don’t make me get out of bed yet?” You grunt and hide your blushing cheeks in the pillows.

“I’ve got something for you,” Kara prods the soft side of your belly with a wry little smile.

“You didn’t have to do that…”

“Shut up,” she rolls her eyes with a grin.

“Honestly, I mean it, you didn’t have to get me anything Kara,” you insist.

“And honestly, I mean it, shut up already,” Kara winks and pats your belly.

“I’ve got something for you too,” you whisper back with a tight smile as the sheets rustle.

Before you know it she is off, bounding through the bedroom door and down the hallway like a puppy skidding through the apartment. It makes you grin and push up on your elbows, watching her dart between rooms in search of where she hid tiny things. A card here. A little wrapped box there. Before you know it she is doubling back around, finally satisfied she has everything. 

A sudden nervous wave washes over you, then, it’s a strange warm feeling that you are entirely unproficient with handling. Mainly because any gift-giving celebration when you were growing up involved the kind of lavish, wealthy, emotional absence that left you feeling a little rotten inside. It would always play out the same. Dad would buy mom everything: Faberge eggs, Cartier, an Andy Warhol for good measure. Mom would buy Dad a new watch, and not just any kind of watch, not even a Rolex or a Breitling, these watches were _special,_ or so she said. They would be one of a kind, blistered around the face with blood diamonds from the deepest and most-precious mines sourced from Sierra Leone. How many _special_ watches were enough before the watches stopped being so special at all? Well, Dad never lived long enough to find out. 

Lex on the other hand? He was a perfect example of what happens when lavishness meets ingenuity. For Mom’s fiftieth birthday he discovered a new alloy compound and named it Lillianite, ‘because this metal is unbendable, indestructible, and priceless — just like you, Mom. The first manned rockets we send to the stars will be coated with it, carrying your name across the solar system.’

Lillianite, much like your mother, is cold, expensive, and belongs in the cold vacuum of space. Maybe the homage wasn’t so trite after all.

Kara walked back towards the bedroom and the warm feeling persists and becomes the more strange. One thing that always remained the same during gift-giving celebrations in times since passed was how boring and unthoughtful they felt. One year, the Christmas after you returned from Stanford, you tried to be cute and give everyone a hand-knitted sweater. Granted, the sweaters were a little short in the sleeve, a little uneven around the shoulders, but you tried. You learned a craft, you spent months knitting them, you took a raw material and turned it into a gift filled with the most valuable resource of all: love and patience.

The following day when Mom told the housekeeper to throw ‘those ugly things’ out with the boxes and wrapping paper, you swore to never try so hard again. To never be humiliated the way you were humiliated that day. You may be emotionally intelligent, but being a Luthor is carved into the nuclei of every cell in your body, and there was no way you would be embarrassed that way again.

Cartier jewellery.

Luxury cars.

The finest whiskies.

One of a kind art pieces.

Han dynasty ornaments.

It all became as thoughtless and manufactured as an Amazon gift card.

Kara clambers back into the bed and smooths your cheeks with the warm palms of her hands, you smile and in turn she leans forward with those sweet small kisses that leave your lips hung and the corners of your mouth pulling into a grin.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she whispered and nuzzled you.

“Ugh, you’re disgustingly adorable,” you make a poor attempt at shaking her off.

Kara laughed and nuzzled into you neck harder until you finally concede and flop backwards onto the pillows. Satisfied with her victory, she pulled back and reached for the poorly wrapped gifts on the side table. “It isn’t much, but I thought you’d like these…”

“Trust me,” you exhale and blink rapidly, “this is already way more than I thought I would get to have.”

“Now who's the sap?” She throws you a cocky look and the two gifts are placed carefully in your lap.

“Trust me when it comes to you and me, I have always been the sappiest of all saps.” You take the first present and don’t even pause for thought before you start tearing into the paper.

It’s clothing of some kind, maybe cashmere or cotton, it’s black and soft on your hands. By the time you pull it up for appraisal you already know what it is, and you’re already on the brink of a wobbling bottom lip.

“I picked it up from JCPenney’s, I know it’s not much but you said you liked mine and I thought the black would look cute when you’re at work — it’ll be like I’m giving you a hug whenever you need it—”

You cut her off with the kind of shuddering kiss that involves both hands on her cheeks and your stilted breath tumbling over the edge of your lips into her chin. You don’t know why this gift has touched you, not really. You have plenty of sweaters. Plenty of clothes. More than anyone could ever need. But the thought of Kara buying something small that you told her you liked with the sole intention of her presence sitting on your shoulders during the days you need it most? Priceless.

“You like it?” She asks you softly, all hopeful blue eyes and teeth in her bottom lip.

“I love it,” you chuckle and waste no time putting it on.

“Open the other gift,” Kara nudges your hand eagerly.

Once again, you become an excited little girl tearing open wrapping paper. This time you find a small green box beneath the paper, it’s about the size of an apple. You lick your lips and dread opening it because small green boxes tend to hold watches, and you really don’t want to go through the charade of hiding your disappointment that Kara felt the need to waste money on a _special_ watch just for you.

Your disappointment doesn’t last long.

You lift the gold embossed lid and open the thin white paper, and hiding beneath is a paperweight.

A simple, perfect, paperweight with a flower inside.

“Do you know what flower that is?” Kara spoke up and leaned her head on your shoulder.

“My favourite kind, a Calla lily,” you beam and examine it closer.

“Not just any Calla lily,” she muses with a slight hum.

“Not just any Calla lily?”

“That lily is from the bouquet I got you the night I showed up and said I was ready. The next morning I had a feeling we were going to be in this for the long haul,” she blushes and takes the paperweight from your hand, lifting it up towards the light to reveal a few imperfections in the injection moulding. “So I watched this YouTube tutorial and figured out how to put it in acrylic. I poured it into this mould I made and well, long story short, it took a few attempts and few stolen lilies from the coffee table but I did get there in the end. I wanted you to have something you could hold in your hand and know that every day, I choose you. A thousand times you.”

“Oh, you are good.” You grit your teeth to hold back tears. “You are so freakin’ good at this.”

“You inspire me,” Kara planted a small kiss beneath your eye, halting a thin dribbling tear right in its tracks.

“You’re everything they think you are, you know?” You turn and stare at her, clutching your perfectly shoddy paperweight. “Kind, wonderful, generous, loving, the list goes on.”

“I try,” she shrugged.

“Can I have my turn now? I want to give you something?”

“I already know it’s going to be wonderful. Yes, please, do,” she excitedly shooed with her hands as you clamber out of bed and open your sock drawer to rummage.

“Just,” you huff and slap around the back of the drawer, “please...don’t...be...disappointed...if...you think it’s…ah!” You grab the envelope.

“If I think it’s what?” Kara blinks in uncertainty.

“Not traditional.”

“Well I doubt you fitted a yacht in that envelope so consider my worries assuaged.”

“Oh,” you pull a funny expression and scratch the back of your neck. “Do you think the dealership will take it back? I already bought the champagne to take down to the harbour. _The Flying Supergirl._ The paint has barely dried on the hull.” You wince.

“Shut up,” she chuckles and leans over to eagerly take the brown envelope from your hands. “Besides, you would never call a yacht The Flying Supergirl, you’re way too understated for that.” Kara teased and began to open it.

“Oh well, you should see this yacht, it’s special,” you say nervously as she pulls the CD out first, and then the card. “It’s blue and red, the fastest model on the seven seas actually. There was no other name for it.”

“This isn’t some joke within a joke right? You didn’t actually buy me a yacht?” Kara looked up with a narrowed-eyed smile with the open card in her hand.

“If you don’t like what I got you I can buy the yacht,” You promise quickly. “We’ll vacation in Monte Carlo. It could be your thing. Wonder Woman has the invisible jet, why not a blue and red yacht for Supergirl?” You blabber as she reads the card.

You watch her mouth twitch as she mimics words on the page.

Her blink becoming slow as she unfolds a piece of paper placed in the card.

Her brows furrowing as she re-reads one part in particular over and over again.

“Lena,” she exhales your name far too calmly as if she’s trying her hardest not to let her voice shake. The piece of paper with her emblem emblazoned on the paperhead is turned and presented to you. “Is this real?”

You mumble nervously, “I thought my explanation in the card was pretty concise?”

Shocked silence swallows the bedroom.

“I called it _The Supergirls of Tomorrow_ initiative. You see at first I thought I would show you how much you mean to me by getting you nothing much at all, just something stupid like a bouquet of flowers and a teddy bear. I thought if I proved to you that I’m not…extravagant? Not over the top like everyone thinks?” You scratch the back of your neck nervously, “I thought that you would love that about me. It’s stupid which I realised too, because I’m not normal and maybe that is supposed to be the thing that you love about me. Cus the thing I love about you is that you’re not normal too. I love that you are devoted to public service, that you are kind, generous, and concerned with making National City a just and better place. I love it so much that I want more of it in the world.”

“So you created a ten-million dollar charitable initiative...in my name?” Kara blinks in utter dumbfounded shock.

“Devoted to the education and betterment of girls and women across the world, enabling them to become the teachers, doctors and scientists who will carry on the Supergirl legacy of tomorrow. Yes, I did that.”

“You did that?” Her expression wobbles. Tears begin. Sniffles start. You breathe easier.

“Well, I made you a mix-tape too and backed it on to a CD. Let’s not forget about that,” you hush and finally clamber back on to the bed.

“I love you,” Kara mumbles between the hot tears. “I love how not-normal you are. I don’t want normal. I want you. Stupid. Perfect.”

“Well,” you smile and pull your new sweater tighter around you, “we’ll be not-normal together then... I think I'd like the company.”

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